Saturday, August 13, 2016

#DonLemon 's Violent Campaign Rhetoric

The liberal media spent a full two or three days this last week castigating Donald Trump for using what it maintained was violent rhetoric. CNN anchor Don Lemon was particularly outraged by Trumps comments.

No one seems to have noticed yet, least of all the liberal media, but most of the rhetoric used in political campaigns is based on violent rhetoric. In fact, the chief metaphor used in any political campaign comes straight from warfare, where the rule of the day is killing and general mayhem.

Like a lot of terms in our daily vocabulary, campaign terms are metaphors from some other area of life (and, in this case, death) whose original usage we see right through because of our common use of them. 

In fact, the term 'campaign' is itself a martial metaphor. Before there were ever democratic forms of government, armies when "on campaign," meaning they went off to kill people and break things. In fact, the earliest occurrence of the political use of the term in English dates only to the very beginning of the 19th century A.D.

And the military metaphors don't end there. 'Win', 'lose', 'victory', 'defeat', 'war room', 'battleground' states, 'fight', campaign 'foot soldiers', an election constituting a 'rout'—not only is it common in political language, it is the dominant metaphor.

So let's all panic now and run around telling everyone the political sky is falling because virtually every politician out there is using explicitly martial language, clearly indicating that they are advocating death, rape and pillage—even Hillary. I'm expecting that any second now Don Lemon will go into full apoplectic mode, warning everyone that they should head for their basements and stay there until after the election is over.

Oh, but wait. 

It is not only politicians who use these terms, but journalists who cover their "campaigns." In fact, Don Lemon uses them on a daily basis.

Don Lemon. Advocating death, rape, and pillage. So sad. Maybe he could conduct three consecutive days' worth of overheated interviews with liberal commentators on what a hypocrite he is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don Lemon has the IQ of a ficus tree.